How Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Can Help with Anxiety

Anxiety can therefore be described as a mental health disorder that cuts across all the continents of the world affecting millions of people.

It can come out in victim thinking, hypochondria, apprehension, or anxiety, and can hinder or adversely alter working, studying, or interpersonal interactions.

Although there are many interventions for anxiety , it is widely admitted that one of the most efficacious is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

This blog post will discuss the way through which cognitive-behavioral therapy can be useful in aiding or enabling someone to deal or do away with anxiety.

 

Understanding Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

 

CBT is one of the most common types of therapy in which the therapist and the patient work towards changing the patient’s way of thinking – and thus – also their behavior.

CBT was originated in the 1960s by Aaron Beck; it proposes that one’s thinking, emotions and conducts are reciprocally linked.

Cognitive distortion leads to negative action as well as negative feelings that make the negative thinking cyclic.

CBT also works towards changing this vicious cycle by letting the people know how to change these thought processes, which in turn help change behavior and consequent emotions.

 

How CBT Addresses Anxiety

 

CBT is more effective in case of anxiety as it directly addresses thoughts that lead to anxiety.

Cognitive processes are switched, particularly in worrying, where the individual tends to catastrophize or overemphasize a given situation while being over-optimistic about the negative outcome and in�wing that it is never going to end.

These patterns can lead people to become increasingly anxious and avoidant and this makes the anxiety worse.

In CBT, people are helped to recognize such negative thoughts and then to replace them with rational thoughts.

For example, a person who fears public speaking might think, “I will make a fool of myself, and everyone will laugh at me. ” CBT helps them evaluate this thought: This is because some of the thoughts they have are irrational for instance, “what proof do I have that I will make a fool of myself, have I ever spoken in public before and what happened?” When one changes this kind of thinking into the rational one, he or she will be able to reduce his or her anxiety.

 

Key Techniques in CBT for Anxiety

 

Several techniques are used in CBT to help manage anxiety:

1. Cognitive Restructuring: This technique involves focusing the client’s attention to the various untrue thoughts he or she has been holding and encouraging the alteration of the thought process. One practical way in which information supporting or countering a specific thought can be used is to enable a person to swap a distorted thought with a rational one. For instance, instead of developing a belief that states, “I will fail this presentation.” A person is trained to have healthy beliefs such as, “I am prepared and I have succeeded in presenting in the past.”
2. Exposure Therapy: Another treatment that is often incorporated in CBT for anxiety disorders is called exposure therapy. In this method, people are made to face the object of their fears under carefully controlled environment by allowing them to face it in a step by step manner. The idea is that the frequency of such behaviours should decrease with time due to the gradual decrease of fear. For example, one’s social anxiety eliciting trial will involve initially picturing a social event, then attending a small party as a first step and then having the ability to attend even large events.
3. Behavioral Activation: This just involves doing things that the person would like to do or things that have purpose in the lives of the person. Sometimes anxiety results in avoiding some situations, and this enhances the tendency to develop negative thinking and feelings of fear or dread. People need to spend more and more time participating in these activities because the avoidance of such experiences leads to the continuous build up of avoidance to the point where people cannot function.
4. Mindfulness and Relaxation Techniques: CBT may include breathing exercises, proper muscle relaxation, which aids in decreasing physical manifestations of anxiety. Such techniques can be useful to modulate the activation of nervous system and, therefore, decrease the physiological stress reactivity.

 

Benefits of CBT for Anxiety

 

CBT has several benefits for individuals struggling with anxiety:CBT has several benefits for individuals struggling with anxiety:

• Evidence-Based: CBT is by far one of the best researched types of psychotherapy with numerous empirical findings in its regard pointing the efficiency of the treatment for the anxiety disorders. Studies have indicated that it can be at least as effective, if not more, as the use of drugs to some people.
• Skill-Building: CBT provides people with skills they can apply as they go through their everyday lives. These skills assist them to deal not only with anxiety, but other issues as depression or stress.
• Short-Term and Structured: CBT is different from some other therapies in that it is often brief, most often structured around achieving a set of well-defined goals. This approach of structuring makes people have a clear view of how a task is being accomplished and makes them feel accomplished as they progress through the plan.
• Personalized Treatment: CBT is very flexible and can be made to suit a client’s needs as well as their detail peculiarities. Those professionals engage patients in the formulation of an individual treatment plan that meets the needs of the latter.

 

Conclusion

 

CBT is a useful, theoretical way of working through anxiety.

Due to focusing on negative thoughts and actions that cause anxiety, CBT aims to make an individual an active master of his or her well-being.

The patients suffering animosity can be guided by a professional therapist; the person will be able to identify thought patterns that result in anxiety, and shift them, as well as learn to use more constructive ways to deal with the issues and gain confidence in order to confront them.

In the case that you or someone close to you has an anxiety disorder, CBT could help and therefore it is something to consider.